B V 

4905 





LIBRARY t)F CONGRESS. 

Chap, Copyright No. __„___. 

ShelfX>_5& 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



EVERLASTING ARMS 



BY 



7 

FRANCIS E. CLARK, D.D. 

President of the United Society of Christian Endeavor 

AUTHOR OF "WORLD WIDE ENDEAVOR," 
" THE GREAT SECRET," ETC, ETC. 



New York : 46 East 14TH Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

Boston : 100 Purchase Street 






-t 



The LibR-RY 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



, J 604 



Copyright, 1898, 
By Thomas Y. Ceowell & Company, 






<d 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

0. J. Peters & Son, Typographers, 
Boston, 



TO ALL THE SAD AND WEARY, 

TO ALL WHO BEAR HEAVY BURDENS, 

TO ALL THE GRIEF STRICKEN, 

TO ALL WHO HAVE LOST HEART AND HOPE, 



ftljfs 3LtttIe Book, 



WHICH ATTEMPTS TO TELL OF THE STRENGTH AND 

COMFORT OF 

THE EVERLASTING ARMS, 



te JUetucateti, 



The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath 

are the everlasting arms. 

Deut. 33:27. 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 



" Give me a great thought, that I may live 
upon it," said a poet of a foreign tongue. 
" Give me a great thought, that I may live 
upon it." 

Here is such a thought : " The Eternal God 
is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever- 
lasting arms." 

God, the Christian's refuge and abiding- 
place ! Surely no greater thought can be ex- 
pressed in language. 

Anything is really valuable, so far, and only 
so far, as it satisfies real want. 

There are three factors that enter in, to en- 
hance values. First, the urgency of the need; 
second, the universality of the need; and third, 
the completeness of the satisfaction. 

Let me illustrate this in a very simple way. 
Air and water and light are of the utmost 

5 



6 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

value because they satisfy the most pressing, 
urgent needs. Neither man nor beast nor fish 
can exist without them; so, for this reason, 
they become, though neither bought nor sold, 
the most valuable of material objects. 

Again, the universality of the demand largely 
determines values. This is shown in a rough 
way by a reference to the market quotations 
in the first newspaper we take up. Those 
articles are called staple products for which 
the demand is more or less universal and con- 
stant. Corn and wheat and rice and cotton 
are numbered among the staple articles, be- 
cause they are wanted everywhere. 

To be sure, man can exist without any one 
of them, and so they are not so important as air 
and water ; but the demand for them is so con- 
stant and so nearly universal that they may well 
be called " staple," and their value is decided 
by the universality of the demand for them. 

The Kaffir, in the South African bush, does 
not demand a genuine work of the old masters, 
a Van Dyke or a Murillo; but he must have 
his bushel of rice and his strip of cotton cloth. 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS, 7 

The red Indian manages to exist without 
paying a thousand dollars a night for a pop- 
ular lecture, but he cannot get along without 
his maize. The hardy dweller in barren Ice- 
land can dispense with an illustrated paper and 
with a work of Grecian art, but not with his 
flour-barrel and the fruits of his garden-patch. 

We often make a mistake in supposing that 
a thing is worth what it will bring, that value 
is synonymous with price. A genuine work of 
Raphael, perhaps, cannot be bought for ten 
thousand barrels of flour in some parts of 
Europe and America; but this is not its real 
value. In Labrador, in Zululand, in Pata- 
gonia, the Raphael might be used for a door- 
mat, while the flour-barrel might be worshipped 
as a god. 

Or suppose a time of famine. Then the 
real value of each becomes apparent; the im- 
portance of the one increasing with the increas- 
ing need, while the value of the other steadily 
decreases, until a thousand Raphaels cannot 
buy a single barrel of flour. 

The other factor that determines the real 



8 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

value of an object is the completeness of the 
satisfaction afforded. The best flour, the best 
wheat, the best cotton, the best pictures, sat- 
isfy the need better than an inferior quality; 
and hence they are more valuable. 

Now, I think it can be shown that the most 
necessary thing in the world, the want of 
which is most universally felt, is a sure and 
safe refuge ; and that this want is alone com- 
pletely satisfied by the Eternal God. 

Even the birds and beasts and insects share 
this need with man. The young sparrow 
perches fluttering on the edge of the nest 
which has been its only home. It fears to 
trust itself to its untried wings, and soon falls 
trembling back into its moss-lined nest. 

The timid hare, wary and alert, is always 
careful not to place too great a distance be- 
tween itself and its burrow. 

The herd of deer always keeps an outpost 
on the watch, with head erect, scanning the 
horizon and snuffing the breeze, lest a hunter 
creep between it and its safe refuge in the 
impenetrable woods. 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 9 

Even the minutest insect, which we brush 
from our coat without a thought, has its refuge 
and means of defence from its enemies. In 
some varieties the defence consists in so iden- 
tifying itself with the leaf or twig upon which 
it feeds that it cannot be distinguished by its 
enemy. Another has the power, though en- 
tirely inocuous itself, of so resembling, when 
it wishes, a poisonous insect that no bird or 
other foe will dare approach it. Still others 
carry with them a casemate, into which they 
may withdraw whenever danger threatens. 

The child feels the need of a refuge as soon 
as the need for food. Why does the little 
tired romp nestle so confidingly in the mother's 
arms, when the active day has come to a close 
and black night closes in, or when the slight- 
est fear disturbs it, unless within its little heart 
is implanted the ineradicable need and desire 
for a safe refuge? 

Take up again your morning paper and look 

in the column of " Wants," and you will find 
an illustration of our theme. Almost any one 
of these innumerable advertisements might be 



10 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

headed : " Wanted — a refuge." Many of 
them are houses to let or to sell, but they 
imply that there are families here and there 
who are looking for a home refuge to which 
they may retreat. 

Some of them are calls for a business or a 
business partner, or for capital; but the ulti- 
mate aim of the advertiser in all this is, that 
he may secure a comfortable and happy refuge 
for himself and family in old age. 

The young man plans and dreams and as- 
pires to this ; the man in middle life labors and 
toils for this ; and we may well say that all the 
world, consciously or unconsciously, is seeking 
an asylum for future years. 

Modern philanthropy and humanitarianism 
busies itself with little else than providing 
refuges for those who cannot provide them for 
themselves, — refuges for the insane ; hospi- 
tals for the sick ; asylums for the blind, for the 
deaf and dumb, and for the cripple ; homes for 
the tempted and fallen, retreats for released pris- 
oners, — all an outgrowth of man's inextinguish- 
able desire for a safe home, for a secure refuge. 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 11 

But the defences which we raise and the 
refuges to which we retire are not all of such 
a material character. We perhaps more often 
find a refuge within ourselves than elsewhere. 
Some one insults us or wounds our pride, and 
we immediately incase ourselves in a fortress 
of repelling dignity and cold reserve toward 
that person. We are pitied for some misfor- 
tune about which we are sensitive, or offered a 
charity which we are too proud to accept, and 
forthwith we bristle all over with stateliness 
and disdain. We find a refuge within our- 
selves from these attacks, and often a most 
unsatisfactory one, it must be confessed. 

The prime importance of a safe refuge, then, 
is manifest. It has the marks of true value; 
it is universally demanded; the urgency of 
the demand is extreme. The beggar in his 
rags, no less than the king in his royal pur- 
ple, desires a hiding-place. 

The Jews of old, you remember, had their 
cities of refuge, to which those guilty of inad- 
vertent manslaughter might flee. It was the 
duty of the Sanhedrim to keep the roads lead- 



12 THfi EVERLASTING ABMS. 

ing to these cities in good repair. Forty-eight 
feet wide they must always be, and straight as 
the surveyor's line could make them, without a 
hillock or an unbridged river to impede the 
traveller in his race for life. Wherever there 
was a divergence in the way, a guideboard 
pointed out the right direction; and two law 
students were appointed to run with the un- 
fortunate man, and lead him to the city of 
safety. 

But the Christian's refuge is even more ac- 
cessible yet. There are no obstructing hillocks 
or impassable rivers in the way. Almost every 
chapter in God's Word is a guideboard to the 
city of refuge. You have but to resolve aright, 
and you are in this refuge. You have but 
truly, obediently to desire to be there, and you 
are there, so accessible is God's heart of love. 

I have read of a child stolen away from its 
father's home in very early life, and brought 
back at last, after very many years of gypsy 
wandering, to the parental roof. The little 
boy was not told who he was, but was left 
to wander at will about the house. Everything 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 13 

seemed strange to him at first, as he wandered 
through the rooms, looking with curious boy- 
ish eyes at pictures and ornaments and furni- 
ture with which he had once been familiar. 
His glad father followed close behind, to see 
if any object would bring back the lost mem- 
ories. At length he stopped before a picture 
of his own dead mother; something in the 
face arrested his attention ; he gazed at it long 
and earnestly; a flood of recollections, well- 
nigh lost, poured into his soul; the other ob- 
jects began to look familiar, and he threw 
himself sobbing into the waiting arms of his 
father, overpowered by the newborn hope and 
joy which the picture had awakened within 
him. 

You are all in your Father's house, though 
you do not know it. Look around you ! Do 
you not see a face on a cross, a face full of 
anguish, but more full of love ? He is looking 
at you as the pictured mother's face looked 
from the wall at her lost boy. Does not this 
face bring back intimations of forgotten love, 
yet of love that is still yours ; of a wandering 



14 THE EVEBLASTING ABMS. 

from home, yet of a home with wide-open 
doors, a home in which you are to-day did you 
but know it? 

How exceeding sweet is this verse that tells 
of this refuge ! — " The Eternal God is thy ref- 
uge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." 
Did you ever read verse of laureate more sim- 
ply beautiful? It combines strength, tender- 
ness, and poetic purity in such a way that it 
seems as if the writer must be a sturdy war- 
rior, and a prince among poets both in one. 
And well may these beauties be found in this 
verse, for he who wrote them — 

. . . "was the bravest warrior 

That ever buckled sword; 

This the most gifted poet 

That ever breathed a word; 

And never earth's philosopher 

Traced with his golden pen, 

On the deathless page, truths half so sage, 

As he wrote down for men." 

"The Eternal God is thy refuge" — the very 
repetition of these words seems to raise a bar- 
rier between ourselves and evil. How impos- 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 15 

sible loss and failure seem when we are in 
such a refuge. 

" Conceive a range of mountains," says a 
well-known writer; "conceive a range of 
mountains extending the whole length of a 
continent, piled up in one unbroken wall of 
rock above the region of the clouds, resting 
upon a base broad enough to cover a kingdom. 
Conceive the power sufficient to uproot that ad- 
amantine barrier from its deep foundation, and 
hurl it into the midst of the ocean. Such an 
act of power would be easier to perform than 
to defeat or change that word of promise by 
which God engages to fulfil the desire of them 
that fear him in all generations. 

" Go climb with toilsome endeavor to the 
thunderous heights of the great mountains. 
Look forth from these rocky battlements which 
the fighting winds have stormed against for 
centuries, yet never shaken. Can you beat 
them down to the small dust of the plain truth 
by the stamping of your foot ? Can you blow 
them away with your breath as the winds blow 
the leaves of autumn? You could a thousand 



16 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

times easier do that than could one poor suf- 
fering child of faith be snatched from the pro- 
tecting hand of the Almighty. You could 
more easily blow the Andes into the ocean 
with a breath, than fail of eternal life when 
trusting in him who alone has the infinite 
blessing to give." Such is the strength of the 
Christian's refuge. 

How tender, too, is the expression! "under- 
neath are the everlasting arms." 

As the baby in its first journey across the 
floor is followed by the anxious mother, with 
her soft arms stretched out just behind to 
catch him if he stumbles, so we go through 
life with our heavenly Father's arms stretched 
out ready to catch us. The baby does not 
know that the mother's arms are there; and 
we do not realize that our Father's arm is so 
near, but on that account shall we say, in our 
infantile wisdom, that he is not near us. The 
baby only knows that when he stumbles and 
is about to fall he is always caught, and that 
is enough for him to know. The Christian 
only knows that when he stumbles and is 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 17 

about to fall he, too, is always upheld; for 
underneath are the Everlasting Arms, and that 
is enough for him to know. 

The Christian's refuge has every attribute 
of superlative value. It meets the most urgent, 
imperative need, a need, too, that every son 
of man must feel. It meets it in the only 
way in which it can be met, by affording the 
abundant, absolute, eternal refuge of Omnip- 
otence. 

It is most interesting to note that in these 
days there seems to be a return to the great 
truth of the abiding presence of God. It is 
a truth, not onty of the theologian, but of the 
common people. It is a doctrine that is find- 
ing its way into the lowly cottage, perhaps 
even sooner than into the classic halls of learn- 
ing. It is a truth that is transforming lives, 
that is renewing outworn faiths, and lifting 
up drooping heads. It is at the basis of what- 
ever is true in so-called Christian science. It 
has started the "Don't worry" clubs in all 
parts of the land. It is as new as the latest 
fad of the passing day; it is as old as the law- 



18 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

giver of Israel; as old as Enoch, who walked 
with God; as old as Job, who, at the dawn 
of authentic history, was able to cry out con- 
cerning this same indwelling God whose pres- 
ence he felt: "I have heard of thee with the 
hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth 
thee." 

Our presses are teeming just now with books 
that seek to exalt the mental above the physi- 
cal, the spiritual above the material. They try 
to tell us how to banish fear and anxiety. 
They tell us that to live free, wholesome, 
happy lives, we must, by a strong act of the 
will, abolish the thought of ill from our minds 
forever, deny the existence of evil and trouble 
and sin as unreal things, and admit that only 
good really exists. 

What is this but an attempt, often a very 
crude attempt, to be sure, but nevertheless a 
real effort, to state the all-absorbing truth that 
God is our refuge and our strength, that God 
is all and in all. 

But we do not have to look to the last 
book that dropped from the press for the fullest 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 19 

and largest expressions of this truth. There 
is an old, old book called the Bible, which 
seems to exhaust all language to show that 
God is the refuge of his people, and that those 
that trust in him need fear no evil. He is 
our Fortress, our High Tower, our Rock, our 
Shield, our Abiding-place. He is our Habita- 
tion, our Shepherd, and our Fold. 

I have often wished that all the verses in the 
Bible that tell of the immediate, personal pres- 
sence of God, as the strength and refuge of 
his people, were brought together in one vol- 
ume, that we might realize the exceeding ful- 
ness of God's Word upon this subject. 

Let us take a brief excursion into a few of 
the Psalms, that we may see how largely the 
authors were absorbed by this thought of the 
immediate presence and personal protection of 
the Most High. 

I will choose only the most obvious and un- 
mistakable references to this subject, for the 
remoter meaning of almost every verse gives 
countenance to this idea. 

"Thou, Lord, art a shield about me," says 



20 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

David, in the third Psalm ; " my glory, and the 
lifter up of my head." 

Notice the slight change which the revisers 
give us in this verse, not a shield for me, but, 
a shield about me, as if the shield compassed 
him before and behind, and on every side, and 
was not simply a guard for the face or the 
heart. 

"I laid me down and slept," he continued; 
"I awaked; for the Lord sustaineth me." 

It is thought that at this time he was 
fleeing from Absalom, his son. Enemies en- 
compassed him about on every side. His own 
son had rebelled, and set up a new empire. 
Wherever he went, danger lurked in ambush 
for him, and the bloody sword of an unnat- 
ural child was lifted up against him. 

But even in these circumstances God was 
his Refuge, and his ever present Deliverer, 
and he lay down and rose up, he slept and 
awoke, because God was with him. 

Again, under very similar circumstances, he 
encourages his own soul, and cheers all those 
who come after him with a like phrase, the 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 21 

very repetition of which comforts and soothes 
the weary soul with its own gentle balm. "I 
will both lay me down in peace, and sleep ; 
for thou, Lord, alone, makest me to dwell in 
safety." 

Again, in view of the gladness, the almost 
hilarious joy, which should come to those who 
know that God is their present and everlasting 
defence, he cries out, "Let all those that put 
their trust in thee rejoice : let them ever shout 
for joy, because thou defendest them : let 
them also that love thy name be joyful in 
thee. 

In the sixteenth Psalm, David expresses 
once more, in new and striking figures, his 
blessedness in the immediate presence of God. 
"I have set the Lord always before me," he 
cries out ; " because he is at my right hand, I 
shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is 
glad, my flesh also shall dwell in safety. Thou 
wilt show me the path of life : in thy presence 
is fulness of joy; in thy right hand there are 
pleasures for evermore." 

The eighteenth Psalm is perhaps the no- 



22 THE EVEBLASTING ABMS. 

blest paean of praise that was ever written, and 
its whole theme, in all its fifty verses, is the 
immediate, outstretched arm of God in rescu- 
ing and delivering his people. "I love thee, 
O Lord, my strength," begins the exultant 
Psalmist, as he realizes the mighty power of 
his mighty Deliverer. " The Lord is my Rock 
and my Fortress and my Deliverer, my God, 
my Strong Rock, in him will I trust ; my 
Shield and the Horn of my Salvation, my High 
Tower." Then he goes on to say how God 
hath delivered him from the sorrows of death, 
how he has drawn him out of many waters, 
how he delivered him from a strong enemy, 
and brought him forth " into a large place." 

"Thou wilt light my lamp," he continues; 
"the Lord my God will lighten my darkness." 

It is as if nothing were too small for God 
to do for his beloved one. The service which 
the servant usually performs God will under- 
take. To give his chosen one light, with his 
own hand he will light the lamp. 

Then into a more heroic and martial vein 
his thoughts run, as he cries out, "By thee I 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 23 

have run upon a troop; and by my God do I 
leap over a wall. For who is a god save the 
Lord, and who is a rock beside our God ? It 
is God who girdeth me with strength. The 
Lord liveth, and blessed be my rock; exalted 
be the God of my salvation." 

To be sure, the Psalmist had his days of 
depression like the rest of us. He was dis- 
couraged and cast down, and cried out in his 
anguish, " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? why art thou so far from helping 
me? I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest 
not, and in the night season, and am not si- 
lent." Yet in the very next Psalm after this 
dismal wail we read the words that have com- 
forted a hundred generations of men; words 
that will comfort a hundred generations more, 
and which are universally regarded as the 
sweetest words of the most gifted singer of 
all the ages : " The Lord is my Shepherd, I 
shall not want. ... I will fear no evil: for 
thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff they 
comfort me." 

Why is this Psalm the best-loved poem ever 



24 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

penned ? Because there is no other theme like 
this to appeal to the universal wants of man- 
kind. There is no other thought that can dry 
the tear of every mourner, and comfort every 
sorrow-stricken soul, except the abiding pres- 
ence of the ever-living God. 

Antidotes of fear are sought in every direc- 
tion. Looked at from one standpoint, all man- 
kind seems to be fleeing from the gaunt 
spectre of fear. The miser fears poverty, and 
fills his coffers with shining gold, as though in 
this way he could escape the spectre* 

The business man, wholly immersed in 
money-making, scarcely more wise than the 
miser, gives all his anxious days and nights to 
the accumulation of a fortune, hoping in this 
way to escape the fear of coming misfortune, 
as if stocks and bonds were a sure barrier 
against all ill. 

The baser passions, envy, jealousy, and 
malice, all seem to be set on fire by fear. 
Envy is the fear that some one will surpass us 
in the race of life ; that some one else will 
become more honored, more wealthy, more pros- 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 25 

perous than we. Jealousy is the fear that we 
shall be supplanted in the affections of our 
friends by some one else; and the rapier of 
malice is raised to strike the deadly blow, 
urged on by the envy or jealousy that is born 
of fear. 

And what is the dissipation to which many 
a man flees, except a refuge from his fears? 
The drunkard drinks the infuriating cup, not 
because of any especial pleasure it gives him, 
but because, for the time being, it affords a 
refuge from his fears. He is trying to get 
away from himself, from his past record, from 
his present misery, from his hopeless future, 
from the dismal memories that dog his steps. 
He drinks, and for the time being forgets him- 
self and all his fears. He asks no favors now 
of any king. For a brief hour he has found a 
refuge in oblivion of the past and of the 
present. 

The confessions of every opium-eater would 
tell us the same story. He wishes to benumb 
his faculties, that he may deaden his fears. In 
the fool's paradise of hasheesh he tries to es- 



26 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

cape the swift, racing torments that are always 
at his heels. 

All kinds of dissipation that degrade man, 
and at last seem to extinguish the last spark 
of divinity within him, are sought with the 
same purpose. Their object is, for a little time 
to escape from fear, to run away from self, 
to abolish the past, to draw a veil before the 
threatening future. 

The giddy whirl of thoughtless society, that 
takes no time to think of serious things ; the 
absorption of the business man, that never al- 
lows him a quiet hour for greater concerns ; 
the dissipation at the gambling-table and the 
saloon, — all teach the same lesson, the univer- 
sal demand of man for a refuge, the hungry 
craving of the human soul for a sure defence, 
the unsatisfied longing of every life to feel be- 
neath it and around it the loving pressure 
of the Everlasting Arms. 

We have already noticed how the Psalmist, 
feeling the terrible urgency of his need, found 
it met and satisfied. His experience is worth 
dwelling upon a moment longer. 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 27 

When he felt that God was afar from him 
he was full of fears ; and in bitter anguish of 
soul he cried out, in the very words that our 
Lord himself used on Calvary, " My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 

But soon he comes to himself again. He 
learns the secret of his strength and power, 
that great is his abiding refuge. He rejoices 
in the green pastures and the still waters ; his 
soul is restored; he is led in the paths of 
righteousness ; he fears no evil. Why ? Not 
because stocks and bonds and houses and lands 
had increased, not because dissipation had 
brought momentary forgetfulness and a ficti- 
tious courage, not because power and fame 
had built up a rampart between himself and 
future evil. Ah, no, there is only one ref- 
uge, only one source of strength, only one pair 
of everlasting arms, " I will fear no evil, for 
thou art with me" The abiding presence of 
God has driven away his fears, and now he 
can be confident that goodness and mercy shall 
follow him all the days of his life. 

We have not time to trace through other 



28 THE EVERLASTING ABMS. 

Psalms this vein of golden ore, but it runs 
through all of them. Every miner into the 
hidden things of God will do well to study 
them with close and reverent attention, an 
attention that will soon be turned into glad 
adoration when the secret of God's abiding 
presence as the refuge of his saints takes pos- 
session of his soul. 

In the New Testament the expressions ap- 
plied to our Saviour that reveal this sacred 
truth are quite as wonderful and varied. He 
is the one in whom we dwell, as a man dwells 
within his own home. The most wonderful 
chapter of all the Bible, perhaps, is devoted 
to this thought of the indwelling of the be- 
liever in his Lord. 

The thought becomes even more intimate and 
intense in the New Testament than in the Old. 
The disciple abides in his Lord, not as the 
beleaguered soldier abides in the fortress, but 
as the branch abides in the vine. The abid- 
ing is not simply for refuge and defence, but 
for the purpose of drawing life and nourish- 
ment from the one in whom we abide. In 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 29 

the New Testament the abiding becomes the 
immediate, intimate union of different parts 
of the same plant, of different members of 
the same body; of different organs, through 
which courses the same life-blood. This is 
the thought, in its highest and fullest and 
most glorious expression. Our Lord does not 
hesitate to go to any length to express the 
glory and the power that come from this 
abiding presence of God. 

He causes our weak faith to stumble, and 
to ask if he indeed means what he says, when 
he declares that, "If ye abide in me, and my 
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, 
and it shall be done unto you." 

Over and over again he reiterates this 
thought, lest we should be afraid to appro- 
priate it to ourselves; until at last, at the 
very end of his prayer, with Calvary full in 
view, he prays that all of us may be one, "as 
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they 
also may be one in us." 

This is but the consummation, the full and 
final development, of the Old Testament idea 



30 THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 

of God as the refuge of his saints from all fears 
and from all ills. This is the glorious summit 
to which the thought of the actual, abiding 
presence of an infinite God at last raises us. 

But it is all ours. We need not refuse to 
believe it. The Bible declares it from Gene- 
sis to Revelation. The Scriptures would be 
indeed meagre and meaningless, if this great 
idea, of the actual presence, the surrounding, 
all-compassing, indwelling, life-giving presence, 
of Jehovah, were left out. 

As the needs of mankind are universal, as 
fears chase him from the cradle to the grave, 
as trouble stalks after him in every age, so, 
thank God! the City of Refuge is never far 
away. In the Almighty is the universal need 
of man satisfied. In him alone is the urgent 
craving of the heart altogether met. 

We could lose out of our literature whole 
libraries of the choicest books better than we 
could lose such simple sentences as these: 
"The eternal God is thy refuge; " "I am the 
vine, ye are the branches." 

Upon these promises, in all the ages, men 



THE EVERLASTING ARMS. 31 

have leaned, and they have never proved broken 
reeds. On these words of cheer the sorrow- 
stricken have rested, in them the dying have 
put their hope. They have brought strength 
to the weak and new courage to the strong. 
They have sustained and supported, as well as 
soothed and comforted. They have met and 
forever satisfied the world-weary craving of all 
who received them into their hearts. 

Every faltering child of God can take them 
to himself. They are as intimate and per- 
sonal and individual as they are beautiful and 
true ; for each one of us who reads these words, 
if we are the humble children of God, can use 
the personal pronouns, and say without pre- 
sumption, " Christ is the branch and I am the 
vine. He abides in me, and I in him. The 
Eternal God is my refuge, and underneath me 
are the Everlasting Arms." 



AUG 9 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

021 064 231 6 




